


Adoption

by Blizzardshock



Category: Cthulhu Mythos - H. P. Lovecraft, Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan
Genre: Mentioned Eldritch Horrors, Percy Shows Up In Name Only, R'lyeh (Cthulhu Mythos)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:27:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29306490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blizzardshock/pseuds/Blizzardshock
Summary: Percy isn't actually Poseidon's kid, technically.  Poseidon just claims all the kids that emerge from that dead city as his.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 35





	Adoption

**Author's Note:**

> You ever have an idea that makes no sense but won't let go of your brain anyway?
> 
> Yeah.
> 
> Warnings: Mentions of eldritch horrors and the issues of raising their kids

Poseidon found, after the first dozen or so times it happened, it was just easier to claim the lost children of R’lyeh as his own, rather than try and explain the whats, hows, and whys of the sunken city of star-spawn to his family. Only Hades really understood what he was talking about, the Underworld being forced to navigate around slumbering horrors and guarding weak points in their reality where dark things would often poke and prod mindlessly, pacing rabid animals looking for prey.

After the No More Kids agreement, dealing with the occasional human-ish child that could summon spatial vortexes or grew tentacles or didn’t actually exist in all the dimensions it should became that much harder. He had to secretly find homes for them with families that could manage such oddities, and that came with its own set of difficulties as most of those who could were already entangled with some other monstrosity. He couldn’t bring himself to try and raise any himself, or offer them to those he loved. Their very presence felt like sandpaper to him.

But then there was Sally. His beautiful, infertile Sally, who wanted a child but could not conceive one. And as the Fates would have it, the dead city of R’lyeh had just released another child.

Poseidon was torn. This child was powerful, perhaps related to the Dreamer himself, but… they looked completely human. In fact, they looked like Poseidon himself.

So he made a gamble. He flooded the child with as much of his own essence as he could, shaping what he could and trying to drown out the rest. This child would be powerful, even for a demigod of his, but they would be a demigod, not a demihorror, as such lost children often were. And his beloved could have a child, a reminder of him when he inevitably had to return to the sea.

It paid off. Mostly. Percy Jackson was as normal as any other demigod, and Poseidon felt safe in the knowledge that, while he certainly considered the child his, Percy was not biologically his son and therefore was not the child of prophecy. That was only cemented once the mesh of genes began to manifest in strange ways.

Percy had inherited the Dreamer's wings. They only existed in a dimension the vast majority of beings could not perceive, and left him unaware of the veiny, green, bat-like protrusions from his back that Poseidon himself could only see if he looked very closely for them. When Percy dreamed, he could reach out to anyone nearby that could listen, although he never remembered it. And once, Percy flitted out of Hades’ grasp like mist, pulling on Cthulhu’s ability to wake from death like sleep. It was worrying. But it wasn’t dangerous.

Poseidon never told Percy about his true heritage. Even after the prophecy latched onto him, trying to combat it by revealing the truth made it too likely that R’lyeh would call for its lost son, perhaps even waking the sleeping god to reclaim its child. Everyone knows something is odd, even for a demi-god, about Percy, but they don’t know the truth. And for everyone’s safety, Poseidon intends to keep it that way.

**Author's Note:**

> I could go into all the odd side-thoughts surrounding this idea, or I could just say that Zeus is beyond lucky that his domain stops at the base of the exosphere.


End file.
